Always been a team sport and always will be.

It has never been a thing.

Even your example, that Cavs team was built defensively. So while offensively they were carried by LeBron, defensively, The Cleveland Cavaliers ranked 2nd in defensive rating during the playoff run with a defensive rating of 100.0 over 20 games. That can’t be done by a single person.

So if we choose to mesure it like that, Jokic, Luka and Shai still do this today

Yes it’s harder for a single player to carry a team nowadays because the quality of the role players have gone up

The league is much deeper than it used to be. In the 2000s you could genuinely have 10 out of the 15 players on the team not be able to shoot 3s. So yes it’s harder for one player to carry because there are much more talented, skilled players today. Defenses are also much smarter today

Isn’t the Lakers trying to build this type of team with Luka?

We’ll know how successful they are soon enough

to the playoffs, maybe. but a championship? absolutely not.

No one carries role players lol

People use it as a dirty word, but you absolutely need great role players to win. Even guys like Derrick White and OG, who have a massive impact, are still role players, just elite ones.

Good players can carry bad players, but pretending all role players do is get carried by their star is a misconception

What you’re describing has never existed, at least not consistently. Can some oddball team win a championship with one great player and a bunch of role players? Sure but you usually need at least an All-NBA co-star to be a championship caliber team.

It still exists, but it’s rarer and more conditional than it used to be. The 3-point revolution raised the floor for role players. A “glue guy” today needs to be a credible outside shooter just to stay on the floor, which means even bad rosters have more functional pieces than they did in eras where spacing wasn’t required. That actually helps a superstar look like he’s “carrying” more, but it also means front offices have gotten much better at building cheap, replaceable shooting-and-defense rosters around a star.

Analytics-driven read-and-react systems (motion, spacing, ball movement) distribute value more evenly across a roster than isolation-heavy offenses did in the 90s/2000s, which can make it statistically harder for one guy’s box score to look as singularly dominant even when he is the engine.

A great player can absolutely carry a team of average role players into the playoffs. But not win a championship.

The NBA has too much talent for that to ever happen again, you have people that’s 7-10th best player on teams that would start or be 6th man back on teams in 07.

Bron is damn 1 of 1 in this regard.

If LeBron was 30 he could do it

No current player is as good as LeBron or Jordan were in their prime. But I do think, in terms of the overall level of the league, it is quite a bit less likely for an LeBron 2007 or 2018-like run to happen. Superstars have not gotten better, but non-star players have.

And even in 2018, LeBron technically had Kevin Love even if Love didn’t play up to AS standards often.

Nobody has ever won the whole thing with a shitty team.

Even in 2007, the Cavaliers overachieved to get to the Finals in the first place. The difference between the Cavaliers and Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals was fewer than 4 points per game, and it was a team effort that got the job done.

Cleveland outrebounded Detroit. Big Z, Drew Gooden, Varejao and LeBron vs Antonio McDyess, Chris Webber, Rasheed Wallace, and Jason Maxiell on the boards, and while Detroit had some big names it was the Cleveland frontcourt that won that battle.

Turnovers also favored Cleveland. Detroit turned the ball over 88 times to Cleveland’s 79. Larry Hughes had the worst turnover percentage on the Cavaliers, but Detroit had multiple guys (including Billups) who were even worse. Who was guarding Billups? Who played the passing lanes? It was a team effort.

I think “carry job” is just not a thing like people want to believe it is to prop up this star or that star. The team as a whole had to play well to get them to the Finals. And then another team played even better to win it all.

2007 cavs were a top defense in the nba, sure the names weren’t flashy but they could defend insanely good, they’re nowhere near as bad as presented

Here’s an article that discusses this idea. The article’s main point is that basketball used to be a “strong link” sport, where the team with the best player usually wins. Recently however, basketball has become more of a “weak link” sport, like soccer, where the player without the worst player usually wins.

There’s a few theories why that is. Modern NBA postseason offensive strategy is to find the weakest defender on the other team, then attack him over and over. Then on defense, find the weakest shooter, and ignore him so you can defend 5v4. It’s a very different paradigm than iso heavy plays of the past.

One more thing is to question just how much the NBA used to be a strong link sport. I’ve heard that one piece of evidence that the NBA is the most superstar dominant league is the many dynasties. If we look at the major dynasties of the past however, we find that they often had teams with multiple top players. Showtime, Bird Celtics, Jordan Bulls, Heatles, Duncan era Spurs, etc etc all had multiple players winning individual awards, even though these teams had the best players ever.

We just gonna act like Nikola Jokic doesn’t exist? He once shared a court with Will Barton, Juancho Hernangomez, Facundo Campazzo and Vlatko Cancar.

None of these players are as good as Lebron

It’s literally never been a thing. Every single superstar has had an excellent cast around them when they won a title.

The only ones you can make an argument for are 2010 Dirk and 1995 Hakeem

That’s a myth to begin with. That being said, there are players that can absolutely push good to great

2022 warriors? Without curry that team was lottery level. Their second best player was Andrew wiggins

I think if you put Jokic onto a team like Atlanta, and took Jalen Johnson off, Jokic could take that team to the finals.

Is that the same level? Idk.

I think Jokic could do it. I think if you surround him with almost any other 4 players from any other team’s starting lineup and he will make the playoffs. Maybe not the finals, but he’s that good

In the last 10 years, its been Harden, Luka and Lebron. Of the current stars, I don’t think anyone’s good enough to do it, but I wouldn’t necessarily say they ‘dont exist’, they’re still coming into the league constantly, they’re just not on that level (example would be Trae Young)

Well 2007 LeBron played 78 games, Giannis didn’t come close to that. A top-tier superstar can absolutely get a team of role players to the playoffs. However, the talent across the league has increased so much, that a team with only 1 star/superstar is bound to run into a team with 2 or 3 once the playoffs roll around.

Even in the weak east last year, you had Boston with Tatum and Brown, NY with Brunson, KAT and Anunoby, Cleveland with Mitchell, Harden and Mobley, Toronto with Barnes and Ingram, and Philly with Embiid and Maxey. Even Detroit is kind of arguable with Cade and Duren since Duren made all-NBA, he was just ass in the playoffs. Point is you’re running into some team by at least round 2 that’s trotting out at least 2 stars by past era’s standards.

They still exist.

At the 2001 Iverson or 2007 LeBron level?

I mean, probably not. But, maybe.

And, there’s an argument that Joker is doing it now. But, Denver clearly has better role players than those Philly or Cleveland teams had.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen it work. As you said, lebron has been the closest in 2007 and 2018. But they got stomped. Both were sweep losses.

It doesn’t work, it just shows that you need a real team to win but that if you consistently have the best player on the court night in night out, you can still go far.

Jimmy Butler

People are saying this never existed but it definitely used to to a greater degree. Obviously it’s always been a team game. But the league is in a weak link era where roster construction and gameplan are largely optimized to exploit the weakest single player on either end of the court and that means that teams have to counter that with their own anti-weak link optimization. So what you’re noticing is true to some extent OP.

NEWSFLASH Basketball is a team sport

Cade Cunningham basically did it himself in the playoffs when Duren started playing like Timofey Mozgov

Maybe stars have always needed some help and your 2007 example is both underrating the Cavs supporting cast and not accounting for how weak the East was that year?

LeBron had 43% TS and 6 TO’s a game in the finals yet the Spurs average margin of victory was only 6 points, either that Cavs supporting cast/coaching deserves more credit for keeping it close despite that brick fest or that Spurs team is pretty overrated.

Even wilt in the 60s couldn’t do it. After Oscar Robertson fell off Kareem couldnt do it. A star needs a good team to win

part of the reason one player could dominate is because the teams were laughably inefficient

Jordan had two other Hall of Famers on his team. The 2007 East was extremely weak and LeBron didn’t really do that any other year either. Most of LeBrons other successful years came with one of Kyrie, Love, Davis, or D Wade.

Not sure this concept has ever existed unless you include 1920 basketball or whatever.

Cade in Detroit is pretty close.

Steph did it last in ‘22. like during the final series steph averaged 30+, everybody else was in the 10s.

It’s never really been a thing. LeBron is an aberration in that he dragged two very unremarkable teams to the finals, but in both series they got swept.

Jokic had some of the best offensive seasons ever in the early 2020s, he was only remotely a contender when they had four other plus starters (and a near All-Star in Murray.)

Great players win awards, great teams win titles.

Jimmy Butler got pretty close

look up Denver

Jaylen Brown led a team that people were saying should tank to a top 3 seed and it somehow hurt his value around the league….

You can only do it in the regular season and will get slandered when the team turns back to pumpkins in the playoffs.

I feel like the last time a team who won with 1 super star and the rest boarding all star / role player was Steph and friends in 2022. Klay was def not his old self but Steph def had amazing role players around him.

No the average 3rd and 4th option dudes are way better than ever before. You need those dudes to have signature games

There’s more talent than ever before in the league. Defenses are more advanced. There’s more athleticism at every position. It’s a helluva lot harder nowadays for one guy to carry a team. But it does happen. Jokic and Giannis have done it recently.

The issue is people will shit all over good players to make a superstar look more heroic, or upgrade how good the role players are to discredit the superstar.

LeBron ruined it .. it’s funny you’re using him as the example … when he ruined it 🤣🤣🤣

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